


C-H-E-A-T-E-R

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 23:25:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11263206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: There was actually a very good reason, involving Sontarans and . . . yeah, no. It's absolutely possible to be that much of a sore loser.





	C-H-E-A-T-E-R

**Author's Note:**

> This story was pretty much inspired by eve11's SCRUPLES, a favorite sixth Doctor story of mine. The OED is the Oxford English Dictionary, the only choice for _true_ word snobs, of which the sixth Doctor is definitely one. Brit-picking and beta-ing by Persiflage.

Police Detective Bryan Newmann took one look at the man currently pacing inside the interrogation room and bonked his head gently against the wall, twice. "In a past life," he informed PC Callis, "I molested kittens and punched orphans. That's the only explanation."

"You have to admit," Callis said, sounding slightly choked, "if he changed clothes, neither of us could pick him out of a lineup. He's probably a hardened criminal."

Newmann turned his head to look at her sideways, not taking his forehead off the wall. She was inches from laughing out loud. Granted, the man behind the glass looked as if a clown's laundry had thrown up on him, but that by itself wasn't enough to produce that kind of reaction. Newmann sighed and resigned himself to the inevitable. "What's he in for?"

"Trying to sabotage a print run of the OED."

"What."

"No, I'm serious. He rearranged several pages to include made up words. Apparently set the type himself, so there's no paper trail. It's going to take hours of work to undo it all. Or so I'm told."

Newmann looked at her.

"He could be a terrorist," Callis suggested, voice unsteady with suppressed mirth. "Using dictionaries to send coded messages to his compatriots."

"You're not funny, Callis."

"Sorry, sir."

_"Why,"_ Newmann said. "What possible purpose." It wasn't even really a question, more a plea for a universe where logic worked. He stole another glimpse at the man in the technicolor clothes. The man had given up on pacing and was apparently attempting to stare down the one-way mirror. 

Callis shrugged. "FFM?"

"Full fucking moon only explains so much." Newmann thought about it. "These made-up words. Obscenities? It could be some sort of—" Clown Laundry was too old for university, which was a damn shame. _It's students_ covered a multitude of sins, in Newmann's experience. "Idiotic pub bet."

Made by someone who just happened to know how to set type. Newmann wasn't familiar with printing presses, except for movies where people yelled about stopping them, but he was pretty sure setting type wasn't a skill you picked up from a half-day seminar.

Callis pulled out a pad of paper. "They don't know if they've found all of them yet," she said. "Qaich, Q-A-I-C-H. Noun, a musical instrument. Qawch, Q-A-W-C-H, a device for straightening the weave of a handmade rug. Both supposedly from Arabic, by the way. Qwicre, Q-W-I-C-R-E—"

"All beginning with Q," Newmann noted.

"Except haqir—H-A-Q-I-R. Of course, there could be a few they didn't find yet."

"But that has a Q in . . ." Newmann trailed off and stared blankly at the wall for a moment. "No," he told it firmly.

The wall was unimpressed. "Sir?" Callis said.

"No. I refuse to believe it. First, it would take weeks, maybe months, for those dictionaries to go on sale; even if he's playing by post, that's too late to help. Second, it is physically impossible to be that much of a sore loser. Third, there are plenty of perfectly decent words there—wire, war, car—and I _refuse_ to believe that a grown man would risk criminal charges just for the sake of dumping the fucking Q."

Callis blinked at him. "Sir?"

"Scrabble," Newmann explained.

Callis left off blinking and just stared.

"The Q is ten points. If you can't play it by the end of the game, it gets deducted from your score."

"You play scrabble a lot, sir?"

"Doesn't matter," Newmann said, "because there's _no way._ Maybe there's something to your code idea after all."

The multicolored man disappeared from police custody later that night. Newmann's report was a study in blandness. Callis suggested that the whole matter be summed up by printing **FULL FUQQING MOON** in twenty-two point type, as many times as necessary.

Callis, as Newmann informed her, still wasn't funny.


End file.
